The Anti-MOVE/Mumia Blog

This Site Is An Online Resource For Those Interested In Information About The Philadelphia Based Cult Known As MOVE And Convicted Cop-Killer Mumia Abu-Jamal.
Tony Allen is currently working on a book that amongst other things, chronicles his involvement with MOVE as well as the 2002 murder of John Gilbride

Tuesday, January 31, 2006

Mumia's Million Little Pieces

There isn’t much left of the “movement” that once numbered in the “millions” to “Free Mumia”.

What does remain scattered across cyberspace are remnants of the lies that once fed the Mumia machine and fueled the fire of those who acted on his behalf.

As someone who you could say has been on both sides of what passes for the “Jamal” debate (I will not now, nor will I ever call for his execution), I have learned that the forces gathered to tear down the prison walls to set Mumia free were gathered there upon faith and not fact.

Faith. Arguably the most powerful non-naturally occurring force on earth is what gave the Jamal movement it’s breath, but facts are what will finally bring down faltering, waste of energy, that is the “Free Mumia” charade.

For if there was ever a case that called for the death penalty it would be Mumia’s. For these are what the facts tell us.

But for those of us who filled the ranks of Mumia’s army, we never really bothered to find out what actually happened the night of December 9, 1981.

If Leonard Weinglass said Mumia was innocent, he was. If Rage Against the Machine said Mumia deserved a new trial, than he did. If Mayor Willie Brown proclaimed a Mumia Abu-Jamal day, than it must be safe to say that Mumia was a good guy. And so it went.

Pam Africa and her loyal minions called for all good people on the left to sign a petition or show up for a rally every now and again. Never mind, our “leaders” like Noam Chomsky and Howard Zinn were selling us out intellectually and literally to a two-bit cultist and an unapologetic cop-killer. These men and women of the left who were so brave to “speak truth to power” bullied by a con-woman who talked a hustler game and walked the road of intimidation and cheaply peddled bullshit were straight up conned. And something tells me that it is something they don’t lose much sleep over it.

Recently, Author James Frey was skewered on national TV by Oprah for falsifying pieces of his memoir “A Million Little Pieces”. And rightly so.

When are we going to take to task the whose who of the left who helped peddle the Mumia charade for so long? Pretty much anyone who was involved with the left in the middle to late nineties bought into the Mumia game. Finally, Marc Cooper stepped up and made it ok to admit that maybe there were more than a few holes in Mumia’s story.

I mean, how many years did it take Mumia to come out and actually say that he did not shoot Officer Faulkner? And boy did Mumia’s story sound an awful lot like Black Panther founder Huey Newton’s account of when he was accused of murdering a police officer (Newton got off, as he did some years later after being accused of shooting a prostitute in the face.) Newton was not so lucky when a crack deal went bad and his life was ended.

I guess you could say that the begging of the end of the Mumia movement came when the trial transcripts became available online. And you should notice that not one pro-Mumia website will direct you to those transcripts...The reason for this attempt to keep people from the actual facts of the trial is obvious. The trial transcripts damn Mumia. The carefully polished and articulate portrait of restraint and intellect that has been portrayed to Jamal’s supporters was quickly dispatched by even a cursory reading of the transcripts.

The myth that Mumia was sentenced to death by Judge Sabo was discovered to be a lie. Mumia’s sentence was handed down by a jury that he helped to choose. Sabo merely affirmed the sentence.

The myth about Mumia not being allowed a competent attorney was also shattered.. Read the transcripts and you will find that Mumia didn’t even want an attorney, he wanted MOVE founder John Africa at his side. He repeated this demand over and over again.

The transcripts show Mumia for what he was, and in many ways still is, a man, an intelligent man at that, under the control of a cult that was using him to further there own agenda at his expense.

Jamal would say things in court like, “ your court means nothing to me, your honor” a clear homage to his MOVE comrades. Mumia liked to remind the court that "I’m fighting for my life here," which prompted Judge Albert Sabo to respond at one point, "I don’t think you’re fighting for your life. If you were you wouldn’t be using such tactics."

In Sabo’s courtroom it was not Prosecutor McGill or the Judge who was Jamal’s worst enemy, it was Mumia himself, who was being manipulated by his MOVE companions to act a fool and disrupt proceedings whenever the mood struck himThere are some exchanges from Jamal’s trial that just cannot be missed in order to understand the bedlam and chaos that Mumia attempted to impose upon the court

In this instance Judge Sabo had asked Assistant District Attorney Joseph McGill to begin the next part of his case, when Mumia forcefully interjected, repeatedly refusing to accept Sabo’s ruling that Pennsylvania law forbade John Africa (or any other lay person) to represent him in court:

[DISTRICT ATTORNEY] MR. McGILL: Your Honor, if it please the Court —THE DEFENDANT (Mumia): I’m not finished.MR. McGILL: Your Honor —THE DEFENDANT: I’m not finished speaking, Judge.MR. McGILL: Your Honor, we’ve just had about a half hour, 20 minutes, anyway, of side bar conference and I believe Your Honor has ruled.THE COURT: Yes, I have.THE DEFENDANT: He has not ruled to my satisfaction. This is my trial. This is my trial and it isn’t your trial. I need counsel of my choice, Judge.THE COURT: Are you going to allow the District Attorney to address the jury?THE DEFENDANT: Are you refusing to allow me counsel of my choice?THE COURT: I did rule on that before, yes.THE DEFENDANT: I need counsel that I can have faith in, that I trust, that I respect —THE COURT: This is —THE DEFENDANT: — that is not a member of this court, that is not an officer of this court —THE COURT: Mr. Jamal, are you refusing to allow the District Attorney to proceed?THE DEFENDANT: Are you refusing to give me counsel of my choice?MR. McGILL: Your Honor, as I understand it Your Honor has said that —THE COURT: Take the jury out.THE DEFENDANT: This man has gone to law school, right, but he cannot guarantee me my freedom; he cannot guarantee me victory.THE COURT: Nobody can do that.THE DEFENDANT: Well, how do you know?THE COURT: Well, how do you know?THE DEFENDANT: I do know. I do know. John Africa can do that.THE COURT: No, nobody can.THE DEFENDANT: Well, you don’t know that. I do know.THE COURT: Neither do you.THE DEFENDANT: Well, do you know John Africa?THE COURT: I don’t have to know him.THE DEFENDANT: Well, I do.THE COURT: I don’t have to know him.

Can any sane person really blame Judge Sabo from having Attorney Jackson take over? And what of Attorney Jackson, whose client made clear his contempt for him, and whom Jamal’s latter attorneys would include in the “conspiracy” to execute Jamal. You have to feel sorry for the guy. Here he was, underfunded, hated by his client, hated by MOVE, all the while attempting to put up a defense for a man who was plainly guilty.

But back to John Africa. First of all, there was no indication that John Africa would even serve as Jamal’s attorney if granted permission to do so. Secondly, it was known that John Africa was sub-literate at best and when John Africa had his own trial back in 1981 he let his co-defendant do much of the work in the case and spoke infrequently and briefly. How was he going to come in and take over a trial where a man was on trial for capital murder. Had Judge Sabo allowed John Africa to take over, he should have been fired for allowing someone in his courtroom to commit judicial suicide.

Mumia, who was being advised daily by MOVE members was following the strategy as given to him the group’s members. Just as now, MOVE was obsessed with getting press coverage and here they had a dead cop and his brainwashed murderer to lead them onto the front page every day. With the name of John Africa interspersed through every few paragraphs, MOVE members could not have been more pleased. Mumia’s, MOVE advisors, were leading him straight to hell and he was following right along, a smile on his face as Faulkner’s bloody shirt is shown to the jury.

They led him straight to hell and he gleefully and faithfully followed. It is the path that Jamal still treads albeit a little lighter than usual.

Although he hasn’t officially renounced MOVE, Jamal seems to speak for the group less and less. You see “Long Live John Africa” appearing less frequently at the end of his articles. Perhaps it has finally sunk into Mumia that his buddies in MOVE sold him down the publicity river and the truth is that he is more valuable to them on death row than anywhere else has

Mumia has been MOVE’s meal ticket for so long, that they wouldn’t know what to do with themselves if he were to be set free...Hell, Pam Africa might even have to get a job.

There are no more secrets left in the Jamal vault. His seemingly suicidal behavior at his trial was orchestrated by his MOVE cohorts. And they didn’t give a damn if he ended up on death row, in fact, I am sure that is what they were hoping for. Death Row martyrs are great press.

As for the mystery of how a convicted cop-killer from Philadelphia became the cause celebre for everyone from Whoopie Goldberg to the widow of French President Mitterrand is no secret either. It became just a matter of politics and a collage of well crafted lies peddled to people all to willing to believe them.As for Mumia, he has appeals pending. Statistically speaking, his chances of winning are slim and chances are that he will end up spending the rest of his life in prison, all the while avoiding the death penalty.

But for the rest of us, we know about Mumia and all of his million little lies and there are fewer and fewer of us who are going to fall for them.

Sunday, January 22, 2006

Heir to Death’s Throne

(Long story short. I screwed up some with this article. I think that I may have left people with the impression that the MOVE cult is innocent when it comes to sexual improprities. This is not the case. MOVE forces illiterate girls as young as 12 to be impreganated by much older, male, MOVE members. They also condoned and encouraged a relationship between a 16 year old boy and a 23 year old woman. MOVE is by no means the puritans that they pretend to be)

( photo of Ricky Rodriguez, formerly of the "Children of God" cult)

There is a little boy out there, somewhere, hidden away mostly, but who is considered very important to the leaders of MOVE.

His name is Zack Gilbride. He carries the last name of his father, who was murdered for defying MOVE and standing up for his son and his own right to see his child.

John died trying to rest his son away from the boy’s “mother” who also happens to be MOVE’s current leader, Alberta Africa.

But for MOVE, Zack is much more than just one of the many children of the cult.

Zack is the boy king. He is being groomed to step into place as leader of MOVE.

Unlike other MOVE children he was born in a hospital. Unlike all other MOVE children he was born via in vitro-fertilization. A remarkable departure for a group that claims to be so far from, and so diametrically opposed to, the dreaded “system”. Unlike most other MOVE children the child is Caucasian.

This is the way his mother Alberta wanted things. The next ruler of MOVE was to be white.

This was supposedly a prophesy laid down many years ago by MOVE’s “founder”, John Africa.

But what will happen when little Zack grows up and can read and can learn about his father and his demise? Will he buy into MOVE’s multitude of conspiracy theories about his dad’s death or will he see through the crudely constructed facade? Only time will tell.

Their have been other children who were born to be kings of cults.

One of whom was named Ricky Rodriguez. He was to grow up to rule over the cult that was then known as the “Children of God”. Ricky never took to the role that he never asked for and at only twenty nine years old, Ricky Rodriguez took his own life after butchering a woman to death.

Instead of the periodic orgies of violence as practiced by MOVE, the “Children of God” engaged in orgies of the more literal kind. And like MOVE, they did not shield these children from the evil deeds that were to be done. Like MOVE, they made them participants.

Sexual activities aside, MOVE and the “Children of God” are very much alike. Even the propaganda of both groups strike an eerily similar tone. The “Children of God” offered the following as it’s hook.

“...Reject society...Who are the real rebels of today?... "We are the true lovers of peace and love and truth and beauty and God and freedom; whereas you, our parents...are on the brink of destroying and polluting all of us and our world if we do not rise up against you in the name of God and try to stop you...."

Sound familiar?

Replace a few words and you have what could have been any MOVE statement from the past thirty years or so.

As Ricky grew older so did his disenchantment with the sect that was so willing and eager to place him upon the thrown. He was sickened by memories of abuse as a child and felt that his mother had treated him not as a son or even a person, but as a “commodity”.

As the millennium came to a close, so did Ricky’s relationship with the “Children of God”.

But, just like anyone who has been raised in an authoritarian sect, Ricky had a hard time adapting to life in the “system”.

He did find love and married another former member of the group, his troubles, however, did not leave him. According to a 2005 “Rolling Stone” article:

“ The young couple was so unsophisticated, they were baffled to learn that the place didn't come with furniture. "We had no credit, no driving records, no renter's history.... "We didn't know how to write checks." Ricky drifted through menial jobs and grew more depressed. "I'm not going anywhere with this," he said to his wife "I'm better than this. I've got a brain...”

Frustrated with his life and haunted by his past. Ricky began to formulate a plan that would end his troubles and help to ensure that the group that had stripped him of so much, could do no more harm.

Ricky Rodriguez was going to kill off the leadership of the cult hoping that in doing so, that he would end the suffering that it had wrought upon him and so many others. Included high upon this death list was his own mother, who was recognized as being at the head of the “Children of God”

According to Ricky:

"I've tried for four years,"... "Sure, it's not long. Feels like a fucking lifetime. Every fucking day has been a little worse than the day before." "It's a need for revenge. It's a need for justice. Because I can't go on like this."

In early January of last year, Ricky set his plan into motion. But before he began, he drank, and he sat down with a video camera and explained in painful detail why he was going to go on a bloody rampage. It is a harrowing video, a glimpse at a tortured, confused, but driven young man, who couldn’t see the future through the pain of his past. He toyed with the Glock 9mm and praised the utilitarian features of his K-Bar knife. At some point he turns the video camera off and goes off to do what he feels he needs to do.

Ricky first attempt at retribution ends with a deadly knife attack on an elder member of the sect. For good measure he slits the woman’s throat with his beloved K-Bar blade. But it seems that Ricky, despite his rage and desire for vengeance cannot will himself to carry on with his deadly plot. He calls his wife on his cell-phone.

"Killing somebody is harder than I thought it would be," he tells her. She calls the police, but without more to go on, they disregard her tearful pleas.

Later Ricky calls again. He is now crying and tells his now wife who is now beside herself with fear, "No, I don't want to die here," he said. "There's too much light. I don't feel comfortable."

By 2:00 that morning, the calls from Ricky ceased. He put his Glock 9mm to his head and ended his life and shattered the lives of those who loved him.

After the death of Rodriguez the “Children of God” cult were propelled into the headlines and for a few miniutes society was having to face up to the destruction leveled upon people who are victimized by groups like MOVE and the “Children of God”.

When I heard about Rodriguez and his story, I immediately thought of little Zack.

His father dead, his mother the manipulative leader of what I believe to be a terroristic entity.

What kind of future can this child have?

I have to confess that there is no joy or even hope as I write these words.

Throughout contemplating this article and since I have been here, now late into the night, my stomach has been twisted into knots.

I remember the first time I met Zack. He had the most mischievous little smile of any kid that I had ever seen. He didn’t say much to me, he just smiled, and he was purely adorable. When I look into the face of my own child, it is easy to see Zack. The same brown hair and eyes and a similar quest for that little bit of naughtiness. Not too much. Just a little.

When I would come over, he would always want to wrestle, and if I wasn’t paying attention, he was good for a sucker punch. Quite a left hook for one so small, I must admit.

We went to the beach with him once. I attempted, but failed miserably to teach him how to toss a frisbee. He was so happy to just be a little kid, not Zack Africa, not the heir to the throne, just to be a little kid.

As the custody dispute between Alberta and Zack’s father intensified I saw him less and less. When I did see him, he was not the same child that I had knew before.

The gloom of the moment had stolen his innocence and there is no telling as to what horrid and viciously destructive lies that his mother was telling him. His once shining and bright and happy face was now downcast and you could tell that all of what was surrounding him was weighing heavily on his little soul.

Not long before John was killed, I was at MOVE "headquarters" and MOVE supporter Gary Wonderlin showed up. Zack ran up to him and addressed him as “dad” as Wonderlin quickly scooped little Zack up and ushered him indoors.

At that time I was puzzled. It didn’t make sense at the time. Gary was not Zack’s dad.

And then John was murdered.

Gary disappeared for a while.

Than things started to make perfectly good sense.

And than I remember getting a phone call from Gary telling me that he was getting married...to Alberta.

I feigned excitement and congratulated him, but that same feeling I have in my stomach now is the same one that I had then. It is that terrible sense of fear and loathing rolling around inside me.

I fear for Zack. Who knows where he is, what he is being taught. Is MOVE trying to purge whatever memories he has of his father and replace them with myths and lies? He, for now, is lost in the gloomy, psychological wasteland, that is the MOVE Organization.

I expect the worst because from MOVE that is what one can expect.

As many of you all know, I am not a person of faith or religion, but if you are, you may want to add this little boy named Zack Gilbride to your prayers, it might be all that he has.

For more about the "Children of God" their is a really great website that ex-members of the group that have put together. I would encourage everyone to check it out

Sunday, January 15, 2006

Philly IMC Gets It Wrong On Mumia...Again

When will the good folks down at the Philly IMC come to grips with the reality that the whole Mumia movement is little more than a grand and deliberate facade?

( picture of Maureen Faulkner)

The latest feature on the website doesn’t offer much hope. According to the author of the article “Mr. Abu Jamal's defense isn't based on the details of the night, but rather on the unfairness of the trial that he received”Really.

According to the actual transcripts of the 20/20 piece, then Mumia attorney, Leonard Weinglass makes the claim that Jamal

“...didn't shoot Officer Faulkner, and I think a reading of the evidence indicates that to be so.”

Attorney Weinglass would go further reiterate this point and went into further detail when he makes the claim that:

“Mumia ran to a scene where his brother was being beaten. That is true. As he got there, gunfire erupted. That is also true. But it was Mumia who was shot. Then the officer was shot, it is our contention, and the person who shot the officer fled the scene, as reported to the police that night.”

The author of the IMC piece also is either willfully ignorant or was misled by the pro-Jamal propaganda when the assertion is made that:

“While the 20/20 piece claims that only 3 witnesses were featured in Mumia's trial, the film describes the defense and its five witnesses, including one, William Singletary, who was repeatedly harassed when he tried to offer evidence in defense of Mr. Abu Jamal's claims of innocence.”

In actuality, there was a slew of witnesses who would testify against Jamal. The “three witnesses” in question were three eyewitnesses. According to prosecutor Joseph McGill:

“ What you have is eyewitness testimony, not one but three. You have a weapon, clear. And later at a hospital, he (Mumia) blurts out what he did in an arrogant way”

With regards to William Singletary, it appears that even Jamal’s own attorney had issues with the story as presented by Singletary. Again, according to the 20/20 transcripts:

“But his number-one witness, William Singletary (ph), waited more than a decade before testifying to a story so bizarre even Weinglass has trouble defending it. He said the shooter emerged from the Volkswagen, yelling and screaming, shot Officer Faulkner in the head and ran away. Whereupon, according to Singletary, Abu-Jamal approached the scene and said, "Oh, my God, we don't need this," bent over Faulkner, who'd been shot between the eyes, and asked, "Is there anything I can do to help you?"

Whereupon, according to Singletary, Faulkner's gun, which was in Faulkner's lap, miraculously discharged, hitting Jamal in the chest. Now, that's incredible."

Singletary’s credibility was apparently so suspect, even to Weinglass and company, that when Singletary was asked to relay what he saw the night of December 9, 1981 by the prosecutors in 1995, Weinglass actually objected. He did not want Singletary’s story heard. And why not? Because he knew that Singletary would be proven on the stand to either be a compulsive liar or a man suffering from a severe mental disorder.

And Weinglass could not have been more correct.

Singletary's 1995 PCRA testimony recounted a series of events that could not have taken place.

For instance, Singletary, insists that Officer Faulkner, already dead from multiple gunshot wounds spoke and called for children (Faulkner had no kids), and even though dead, fired his weapon. Singletary described a shooting in which Faulkner was not shot in the back, even though he was. Singletary also claims to have seen an helicopter at the scene. Not only was he the only person to see this helicopter, but the police did not even posses a helicopter in 1981. Singletary was also the only witness who claimed that Mumia was dressed as an “Arab”.

The author of the IMC piece makes the point that Jamal’s case is based upon the “unfairness of the trial that he received” as opposed to a defense based upon the actual facts of the case. This is simply not true. When he was Jamal’s attorney, Weinglass always maintained that Mumia was “actually” innocent and that the physical evidence positively concluded that Jamal could not possibly be guilty.

Once this defense began to fall apart and Weinglass was fired, a new attorney stepped forward to postulate yet another theory that points towards Jamal as being “actually” innocent. Attorney Eliot Grossman would contend that Faulkner’s murder was, in actuality a mob hit and that Jamal was basically an innocent bystander who got caught up in the crossfire.

The issue of Jamal having a “fair trial” was always put on the back burner.

Why?

Because if Jamal had a screwed up trial in 1981 he had only himself to blame.

Mumia, in holding with his belief in the “teachings of John Africa” showed no respect to the judge, the court, or the process, to which he himself had initiated when he gunned down Officer Faulkner.

According to one reporter who was covering the trial:

"For four angry weeks, Abu-Jamal disrupted the courtroom, humiliated his own chosen attorney, insulted the jury and threatened the judge with violence."

With regard to Cynthia White, the IMC reporter, not surprisingly, either is choosing to deceive readers or his or herself been misled. Either way, bullshit is bullshit. According to the pro-Jamal piece.

“For example, the police, in acquiring prosecution witnesses, offered major deals to the people they committed to testify against Mumia. According to the film, one witness, Cynthia White, had 38 prior arrests including 3 pending cases at the time she served as a witness. Those 3 pending cases were never prosecuted. In 1987, White was arrested, released on bail, and never tried for another offense. White provides the only testimony that places Mumia at the scene for the entire length of the incident.”

The fodder for the “major deal” accusations come directly from Veronica Jones, who, along with Cynthia White (now deceased) was a prostitute on the night of December 9, 1981. Jones, in her 1996 testimony, makes the claim that White's alleged "deal" was made with police officers whose names Jones couldn't remember. Veronica also cannot remember when such a deal was made or to what specific benefits Cynthia White was supposed to get from such a deal. And if there was such a “deal” struck, it wasn’t a very good one. You see, Cynthia White was arrested twice within a week of testifying against Mumia.

The statement that “White provides the only testimony that places Mumia at the scene for the entire length of the incident”, while being rhetorically clever, is disingenuous in the sense that it is an attempt to evade the damning testimony of the other eyewitnesses. Eyewitnesses such as Robert Chobert who in 1982 testified that:

“ Well, I let my fare out and I'm marking down on my pad how much it was, and then I heard a shot. I looked up, I saw the cop fall to the ground, and then I saw Jamal standing over him and firing some more shots into him.”

Chobert would stand by his statement in 1995 and made it clear that he had been offered no deal in exchange for his originial testimony and in fact relayed his years of legal and professional woes after testifying against Jamal.

In yet another error, the writer of the IMC piece places the blame for the Anti-Terrorism Effective Death Penalty Act that was passed on April 24th 1996 on Governor Ed Rendell. In actuality the bill was signed into law by President Bill Clinton. And for the record, Tom Ridge was governor back in 1996, not Ed Rendell.

Now, I am all for Independent Media, but what about “responsible” Independent media? I understand that the newswire is open to anyone to post anything, but why feature an article that is so clearly written from a position of what seems to be willful ignorance. The author of the article obviously did not bother to investigate any of the “facts” that they heard, and was content only to parrot the shameless and so-often discredited diatribes of Ms. Pam Africa.

If we are truly to have an “Independant” media it must be one that is not only free from the pressures of the market, or the obsessions of a celebrity culture. It must also be one that is compelled to be intellectually curious and not simply content to repeat the exhortations of members of a discredited movement that seeks to free an obviously guilty man.

Tuesday, January 10, 2006

Straight Up Bullshit From "South Jersey Friends of MOVE"

Picture of Police Officer Daniel FaulknerIt appears that I was wrong in my assertion that the now deceased Stanley “Tookie” Williams was the saint that many had portrayed him to be.

Even I bought a little bit into the propaganda.

According to a recent column penned by long-time Mumia adversary, radio host, and Philadelphia Daily News columnist, Michael Smerconish:

in his 1998 "Life in Prison," Williams dedicated the book to "Nelson Mandela, Angela Davis, Malcolm X, Assata Shakur, Geronimo Ji Jaga Pratt, Ramona Africa, John Africa, Leonard Peltier, Dhoruba Al-Mujahid, George Jackson, Mumia Abu-Jamal, and the countless other men, women, and youths who have to endure the hellish oppression of living behind bars...In denying clemency to Stanley Tookie Williams, Schwarzenegger cited Williams' support of convicted cop-killer Mumia (among others), as an indication of his lack of repentance.”

In essence, the Governor of California thought it a bad thing that Williams was a supporter of convicted murderers.

Of course, the mention of Mumia and MOVE members by Smerconish sent the media-starved, MOVE cult into overdrive and a statement by “South Jersey Friends of MOVE” was quickly pulled from the rhetorical gutter and sent across cyberspace.

The missive was titled, and I am not making this up, “Clear Media Bias Against Mumia”.

I guess nobody down at “South Jersey Friends of MOVE” realized that as a newspaper columnist, Smerconish is supposed to espouse an opinion, or if you will, a “bias” towards something or another.

If you wish to submit yourself to the torturous ordeal of actually reading MOVE’s inane and insincere banter, you can find it somewhere in the archives of the Philly IMC website. I guess the statement was so poorly constructed that even the folks down at the Mumia website thought better of posting it on that site. And trust me, if you can’t get your stuff printed at Mumia.org, you are really scraping the bottom.

My point in writing this, and I do have one here somewhere, has to do with sincerity.

I am not joking when I say that “South Jersey Friends of MOVE” is comprised of no more than three or four people at the most. One of whom is Gary Wonderlin. I find it interesting that right after I write an article connecting Wonderlin to the murder of John Gilbride, the “SJFM” crew come up with a statement decrying murder and killing and violence.

Basically all of the things that MOVE has been doing ever since it has existed.Ever since it’s inception, MOVE has been surrounded in violence, blood, and death. Hell, even before MOVE, John Africa (a.k.a. Vincent Lephart) was stealing cars and beating on his pre-MOVE wife.

If one wants to get a picture of MOVE’s long history of violence you could read “Burning Down the House” or any of the other books written about the cult. Or of course you could visit my website at themoveorganization.com.

But back to sincerity. Michael Smerconish is decidedly and un-apologetically pro-death penalty. He has made this point clear on literally countless occasions. And for those of you who don’t know, he pretty much initiated the anti-Mumia campaign. When it comes to the death penalty and probably a mountain of other issues, I disagree with Smerconish. But I respect him because I see him as being sincere. And although I passionately disagree with some of his opinions, I believe that he has come to them out of a sincere concern for humanity and for the betterment of society.

This is something that I cannot say for MOVE.

A group that uses children as living, breathing, bullet proof vests while they snipe at police officers cannot lay claim to be standing in defense of humanity.

A man who blew another mans brains across a sidewalk cannot claim to be the “voice of the voiceless” while he is at the same time the “voice” of a cult that deprives it’s children of any semblance of education and forces pre-teen girls to be raped and impregnated by older MOVE “men”.

“South Jersey Friends of MOVE” cannot convince me that they are concerned with the “murder” of Stanley “Tookie” Williams as they try to pretend like the “murder” of John Gilbride never happened.

The issue is sincerity. And the only thing that MOVE’s leaders are sincere about are controlling peoples lives, getting away with killing John Gilbride, and keeping up their bourgeois life-style.

Friday, January 06, 2006

MOVE Watch Back Up and Running

Some of you may have noticed, but the MOVE website was down for about a week. I, in my techinical genius have fixed the problem and have got the site up and running again. I am sure that MOVE will be very happy to hear this.

About Me

For nearly a decade I was an adherent of the religious/political cult known as MOVE.
Thankfully, I was able to extricate myself from this dangerous sect and reclaim control of my life.
The story of how I left MOVE was featured in the Philadelphia Inquirer in 2004.
Much of my current work has to do with the murder of John Gilbride in 2002.
John was killed while in the midst of a highly contentious custody dispute with the leader of MOVE.